British Columbia expertise helps clean oil-fouled turtles in Gulf of Mexico

[depakid]

At the Audubon Institute in Gretna, La., sea turtles suspected of swallowing oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon rig are being fed mayonnaise and vegetable oils to help purge their digestive tracts.

For the outside, volunteers like Chelsea DeColle use Dawn soap, just as the television commercials claim. "It's the No. 1 detergent used to clean oil off oiled animals," she said.

DeColle, a 30-year-old veterinary technician on loan from the Vancouver Aquarium, tended to each of 167 turtles at some point during her two-week volunteer stint at the Audubon centre in August.

Staff and volunteers repeatedly went through the same lists of animals and checked their weights, appetites, wound healing, medications, blood profiles and sometimes took radiographs. "Day to day was fairly similar," she said

The youngest, and smallest patient, at half a kilo, was a two-year-old green sea turtle. The largest was a loggerhead of unknown age. Hawksbill and Kemp's Ridley turtles peppered the temporary collection. "Most of them were in fairly good condition and we were just maintaining them so that they can gain weight and meet all the criteria for release," DeColle said, but there were exceptions.

One turtle that wasn't eating on its own was stressed at being tube-fed down its throat. "The doctors ended up placing a tube that sticks out of the neck but actually goes to the esophagus through the skin," she said. The skin was stitched up around the tube and the tube was glued to the shell, to make feeding a simple matter of injecting fish mush into the tube.

DeColle also visited with a bottlenose dolphin.

"I got to participate in one procedure with it. We had to go in the water and actually take the dolphin out to put it on a scale and take blood samples," she said.

DeColle's additional training and exposure to new animals, procedures and people is a "win-win" for the Gulf Coast and for British Columbia, said Dr. Martin Haulena, 43, an Ottawa-born and Guelph, Ont.-trained veterinarian at the helm of the Vancouver Aquarium's mammal care team. "Certainly, the animals and the people directly involved in the Gulf are benefiting from the expertise of some of the best vet techs anywhere," he said.

"On the flip side, they're making friends and contacts and firming up relationships with other experts."

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